


The Christmas Punch

by Parhelion



Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: M/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie should have known not to try that special punch. Or perhaps he just needs to try it again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Christmas Punch

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Captain Xiao. Thanks to Grey Bard for the last minute, well done beta. The remaining problems are mine, all mine.

If tied down and well dosed with truth serum, I might admit that my gaze pauses as it passes Saul Panzer, not that this is anything new. My casual readers may see Archie Goodwin as a ladies' man, but close readers and closer acquaintances sometimes spot my special weakness for the brainiest and the best. Saul is a guy who delivers in both departments

What he lacks are the obvious masculine charms that had lured me, once or twice, into jumping the fence to sample some greener looking grass. You can't square being Manhattan's best street operative with a striking appearance. Around anyone Saul might have to someday tail, he looks and sounds like a cab driver. Both the looks and the sounds are a lie.

Saul doesn't lie about being an independent. Although he may drop everything to work for Nero Wolfe - who is the world's smartest detective when not busy being my boss and a pain in the behind - Saul still pays for his own business phone. He's independent off the clock, too. We had been friends a while, but I had never heard any news about him more personal than the names of the women he would sometimes squire.

Given my doubts spurred by Saul's posing as a clam, and given how busy I was striking out and hitting home runs elsewhere, nothing dicey had happened between us all the years we'd known each other. Even more nothing would have happened on that particular Saturday in December if the two a.m. taxicab shortage hadn't coincided with my case of the staggers.

Saul swiveled his head, checked me, and spoke. "I should have figured."

"I'm swell," I informed him. "Fit as a fiddle. Ready to stride from here to the brownstone."

"Sure, Archie." He pulled my arm tighter across his shoulders and tightened his own arm around my waist.

On most occasions, I would have discouraged such liberties in public, but that night I had tried some of my recent host's special Christmas punch. Since I had attended the guy's get-together for fun and not as a private detective, I didn't detect that his definition of "special" equaled my idea of "laced with an illegal substance." Soon after that mistake, I was pushed into an overflowing bathtub by my date for the evening.

What a great Christmas party I had decided to attend, the sort of affair that ends with fireworks and divorces all around. Most of the guests didn't notice my unplanned dip, given the rival distractions. At least I left under my own power before the cops joined the festivities.

It's rare for me to botch my private life so badly, but even Jove, excuse me, Nero Wolfe nods. Wolfe would have done more than nod if I had topped off my evening's entertainment by driving the roadster back to the brownstone on 35th Street while under the influence of whatever mickey I had drunk, and I sure wasn't loitering long enough for a radio cab to arrive. I mistrusted my temper. However, one block of trying to walk convinced me to call Saul from a bar.

I don't remember what I said on the phone, but it was juicy enough that Saul came over right away. When he caught sight of me outside the bar, still dripping bathwater even as I straight-armed some skinny runt who had tried for an introduction over cigarettes, Saul forgot to keep his cab, thereby proving that Saul nods, too.

He was easy to convince that we needed to move on before I attracted official attention, especially since he knows my relationship with the N.Y.P.D. has its ups and downs, mostly downs. We went off together in search of a replacement cab. As we both could have predicted on any other evening, there wasn't a cab to be hailed. My teeth may also have chattered now and then as we gave up and headed north. Next, we found out about my inclination to stagger. That, of course, was when it started to snow.

Saul said a word too soft for me to hear, and changed directions. He turned up the volume when he told me, "We're going to my place."

I considered this idea as my legs kept moving. I wanted my bedroom in the brownstone, but I still wasn't sure what I would say to Wolfe if I decided to fall over and park in the front hall overnight. He would probably notice that something was wrong if he tripped when he came downstairs Sunday morning, and conversation would result. Saul's apartment seemed like a good alternative.

By the time I had decided to agree with his plan, Saul had already propped me up against a wall while he unlocked the outside door to his apartment house. Then, after he got me inside and the door locked, we went over to the elevator. At least my dose of holiday cheer must have been wearing off, given that I was almost as much a help as a hindrance on our way through the tiny lobby. Saul didn't need to wrap a fist in my overcoat to hold me upright anymore as he pushed the elevator button for his floor.

He'd left to meet me fast enough that both floor lamps and one of the table lamps were still on in his living room. I staggered through the door and then stopped, swaying. Although I had never let on that I knew Wolfe gave Saul the Shirvan carpet covering most of the floor, I still wasn't going to drip on his rug rather than his floorboards.

Saul closed the door, looked me over, and frowned. "You need to warm up. Right now."

"I'm thawing as we speak."

"You sound like a bad castanet player. Can you get into a hot bath without killing yourself?"

"Just you watch." I looked confident.

For some reason, he still seemed dubious. He went and got the bath going before he told me, "Leave the door cracked."

I left the door half open, which was how I could hear him on the phone when I turned off the taps with my toes. "--obvious what they gave him."

I didn't need to hear the other side of the conversation to know whose fat hand held the receiver.

"Sure seems so. He'll sleep it off. Okay, I'll tell him tomorrow morning."

He hung up and headed for his bedroom, I thought to grab blankets to make up the couch for me. I was surprised when he tossed a terrycloth bathrobe through the half-open door without looking in my direction. "I'd bring you some coffee, but who needs a wide-awake drunk?"

"Warm milk would be great."

"Okay. Since you can handle that particular tipple."

I slid further down into the water, gently steaming as I contemplated the weak stomachs of all those other guys who couldn't handle milk. For his part, Saul rattled around in the kitchenette. After a few minutes, he came in, still without looking, and left me my milk. He took away my wet clothes except for my boxers, which were abandoned to the tender mercies of the radiator. Then he went to find the blankets. I know this because I heard him dump them onto the couch when someone knocked on his front door.

Crazy as the notion might be, Saul may have thought his visitor was Wolfe. Something sure had him off his game because he didn't check before he opened the door.

All the way over in the bathroom, I could hear both voices. Saul sounded tense, which was rarer than Wolfe leaving the brownstone or me getting drunk. He was trying to keep it down, but his male visitor was loud. When Saul's voice lowered some more, the other voice rose in response. Then someone smacked a hand against wood, which decided me. After lots of splashing, I was out of the bath and across the living room. I even remembered my bathrobe.

The character standing in the doorway, currently risking life and limb by trying to crowd Saul further into the apartment, was a classic dark-and-handsome stranger, one dressed in a tailor-made suit. I'd have read him as a dissatisfied client if Saul ever had dissatisfied clients. He didn't have them, and I didn't know who this guy was or what he wanted.

I smiled as nicely as I knew how. "Can I help?"

Saul turned. Instead of the gratitude I might have expected, I saw his grey eyes widen, his version of shrieking like a startled starlet. The stranger behind him settled for gasping. I frowned at all this overreaction until I realized that, while I had remembered the bathrobe, I had forgotten to put it on.

"You might want to wear that," Saul said, recovering.

I did, quickly.

"Never mind all this," Mr. Visitor interrupted, "what about my wallet? I'm sure it's still in your bedroom, where I dropped it as you shoveled me out." Then he pursed his lips and asked, in a way that answered more questions than I'd ever expected to have answered, "Unless your new friend found it already?"

"Was it a slim, ostrich-skin wallet with gold fittings and a black silk lining?" I asked.

"No."

"Too bad. According to an ad I saw in the _Gazette_ , that's the chic style for this Christmas season."

"Thank you, Lucius Beebe," Saul called back from the bedroom. He reemerged with the wallet, a simple, black leather number with no noticeable fittings. "Here."

His visitor snatched the wallet from Saul's fingers, but at least he didn't press his luck by opening it to check the contents. "Thank you." He turned to me and added, "You're dripping."

Since I couldn't tell if he thought he was being informative or cute, I left my smile in neutral.

"Good night," he announced to all and sundry, before sallying forth down the corridor with a certain air of triumph.

After Saul closed and locked the door behind his former guest, he turned. He looked at me. I looked at him, too.

"It helps if you belt the robe," he said. His gaze had drifted down before snapping back up to meet my own, I'd bet without his permission.

I looked at him some more. "I need a towel," was what I came up with before retreating to the bathroom.

At least all the spilled water - not to mention spilled milk - was distracting. Mopping also gave me enough time to think and my boxers enough time to finish drying on the radiator. When I returned to the living room, both the bathroom floor and I were now merely damp in places. Saul was sitting in the armchair, waiting. The glass in his hand held two fingers of bourbon along with no soda. From the lingering smell, he'd also smoked a pharaoh, which meant his nerves were braced and the past half-hour wouldn't be passing unacknowledged.

Good. Maybe the dregs of my mickey were giving me Dutch courage, or maybe I had put off this conversation for too long. In either case, I wanted to take my chance while I had it.

Sitting sideways on the couch, I draped the blankets over my legs. Then I leaned back against the couch's arm and laced my fingers behind my head. That nixed any conversational detours into my staying warm while also giving me an excuse to keep the blankets low. Just because I felt like talking didn't mean I felt like playing fair.

Saul still beat me to the first punch. He put down his drink on the table next to his chair before he said, "Too bad my pajamas won't fit you, seeing that you're five inches taller than I am. Broader, too."

"I don't know. The effect might be interesting."

"Sure. Pajamas that need every seam repaired. They only taught us to sew in the army, not to enjoy it."

"Did they also teach you camouflage?"

"No. I learned that on my own, nice and early." His face wasn't giving anything away. "Try not to forget what you drank while you're running your mouth."

The way he said those words, both gentle and tough, reminded me of when I first worked for Wolfe and Saul was teaching me how to handle the streets. I'd bet the effect of my memories was the reverse of what he had intended. With a grin, I said, "Sorry I interrupted your social evening. Still, if I had known the result, I would have downed a mickey and dropped my trousers years ago." Was that a flicker of uncertainty? It wasn't an expression I had observed often enough on his face to be sure. I kept going. "Since it's you, I bet you already know that I switch-hit."

His lips smiled. His eyes didn't. "And I care why?"

I studied the wall solid with bookshelves behind him. "That figures," I told them. "I've met exactly two guys in Manhattan sharp enough for me to skip calculating the ratio between their shoulders and their waistlines, and one's a grumpy porcupine the size of a baby elephant while the other has been posing as the Invisible Man." I let him see my careful survey. "Not that your ratio has ever been bad. Just your suits."

"Is this the usual party line?"

"I'm not tossing out a lure. I'm merely far enough gone to tell the truth while it's still fresh." I yawned. "I admit, I'm not sure I could land anything I'd hooked right now."

This time, his eyes smiled and his mouth stayed still. "Sure. As if I would nibble."

"Not when I'm this lit, you wouldn't," I said agreeably. "However, like the lady said, tomorrow is another day."

That surprised a crack of laughter out of him.

"Since you were looking me over anyway, I thought I might as well point out my availability, not to mention my superior taste in wallets."

"How about you get some sleep?"

Sliding down, I rearranged the blankets. "Go ahead. Tell me I imagined everything. Tell me to get lost. You know I can follow instructions."

"Good night, Archie."

Once all the lamps were out, I let myself grin up at the dark. Nothing dicey had happened between us except for my learning everything I needed to know. But he was done with dodging and had nixed his chance to block, so this match was all over except for the final count. I had all the tomorrows I needed to land my Christmas punch.


End file.
